]]>https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/another-sad-post/feed/0Ariochsexy-costume-es-6180-FrontHoS Map – The Haunted Mineshttps://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/hos-map-the-haunted-mines/
https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/hos-map-the-haunted-mines/#commentsWed, 30 Apr 2014 11:30:04 +0000http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/?p=3311]]>Gah, I got busy and didn’t get to play all the characters from last week’s free rotation! /cry

But Sonya (D3 Barbarian) is up this week and I’m playing the hell out of her.

(Honestly, she feels a little weak to me, I need to spend some time skulking in the forums and see if I can find what I’m missing.)

Alright, map number 2 on the list – The Haunted Mines!

Objectives for this map include an underground mine periodically populated with undead. Kill the undead, collect the skulls, cheer as your golem lumbers towards the enemy palace.

Aesthetically speaking, the Mines map is similar to Cursed Hollow – it’s drab and the sneaky grass is dead and brown. However, our starting map is a little different from the Cursed Hollow.

It’s a little hard to see, but there are only 2 defined lanes: one on the top and one on the bottom. At the middle of each lane, we have a mine entrance.

Here is the mine entrance located on the bottom lane. The mines are not open all the time. Just like the tributes spawning in Cursed Hollow, you will receive a voice announcement and a screen message alerting you to the pending objective.

Once the objective is pre-announced, we get a timer up at the top.

By this time, we also have mercs spawning on the map.

You’ll notice that we have no fancy skulls like we had on the Cursed Hollow map – there are no large golem mercs available topside on this map. Golem mercs would be a little redundant since the objective here is to raise a super golem.

And the mine is open!

Simply right-click on the glowing mine shaft (hur, I said *shaft*) to head below. You can actually see the exit in the pit right above my name plate, characters that are sitting in the mine entrance are visible to those above.

Also visible is a skull counter. There are 100 skulls available. Both teams will get a golem after all the skulls are accounted for, the one with the most skulls is the strongest.

And… here’s where things get screwy.

Your team will get a golem, even if no one enters the mine and you let the other team get all the precious skulls.

While they are down below, you can choose to stay topside, capture merc camps, and just continue the game like normal.

Personally, every VS game (and Practice game) I’ve been in has sent at least a small contingent into the mines to farm skulls, but I’m seeing on the forums that a well-organized team can wreak more havoc with a weak golem plus 3 or 4 merc camps than if they had a mediocre-strength golem. If the relative strength of the golem based on skulls gets buffed, this could change. Ignoring a map mechanic isn’t usually something Blizzard aims to reward, but it does add some variety to the map.

Regardless of the strat used, the team does need to be in agreement or you’ll cripple yourself.

Oh, and because the minimap wasn’t small enough, let’s split it in half.

The mine has just opened. Both teams are gathering around the mine entrance. Obviously, if you can wipe out the opposing team before descending, you can gather more skulls with less worry.

This lower map has the two mine entrances marked with small green arrows on the left. The individual clumps of undead are marked with purple and the big, bad boss golem is the white skull-shaped thing.

Killing the individual undead groups will net you about 80 skulls total. To get the last 20, you need to kill the boss golem.

I didn’t get his good side.

This is not a terribly difficult fight by itself, it doesn’t seem to be much different than the fancy-skull merc camp found on the surface in other maps. It is ranged-friendly, with him having a massive AoE stomp that stuns everyone close to him. The true test of this encounter is dealing with the enemy players.

Once he’s been dispatched, skulls fountain out of him like candy from a pinata. Collect them all before your opponent can and the summoning begins. You can technically leave the mines by going back to the entrance, or you can hearth out.

You’ll notice here we have 90 skulls to their 10. /flex

Once back at your fountain, you can run over to what appeared to be a decorative pile of bones and watch your creation rise from the ground.

When your golem is killed, it will revert to this pile-of-bones-state – wherever it was on the map when it died. If you do multiple runs into the mines, your golems will creep closer and closer to the opposing palace.

He’ll make a bee line to the closest gate. So far, I think if you start on the left side of the map it is the bottom lane and the right side takes the top. With the difference in skulls, you can really see a disparity in the health meter. Look at all our little life ticks.

If you can support your golem with mercs and escort him down the lane, he will last longer. Of course, your opponent is doing the same in the other lane. You might also have popped all the mercs just before the mines spawned to deny the enemy from using them to crash your gates while you were in the mines.

I’ve played this map quite a few times in practice and a couple times in VS. Normally, it takes at least two runs in the mines to complete the match, if not three. But I took some of these screen shots while in a VS match… I know, I normally try to do all my research in Practice… but daily quests…

Much to everyone’s surprise, we crushed them with a single run.

Ignore the Solo Kills line, that doesn’t function in any game. We have no idea why it’s there since Blizzard is so hard up on the team thing.

Overall, I like this map. The split level environment adds depth (ha!) to the encounter and, whether it was intended or not, having to make the decision of how many people to send below or if you want to send any at all allows for this map to be played in different ways.

By virtue of the RNG giving me a couple back-to-back games in Cursed Hollow this is where our map tour of Heroes of the Storm will start.

I did my best to grab shots that highlight different aspects of the map… when I remembered.

And don’t worry, I’m grabbing all these shots in AI practice games so no one else had to rage at me wandering all over hell’s half acre on my photography shoot.

Some of the map basics that I’ll cover today are common to all (or most) maps. I’ll try not to repeat them too much in the later posts, but this post will probably be the largest just to cover some of those features common in Heroes.

Without further delay, here is the first of the four map installments – Cursed Hollow.

First thing to point out, every loading screen for the maps gives you a very quick rundown on what the objectives are for the particular map.

In this case, the primary objective is to collect “tributes” (more on that later; spoiler – there is no volunteering involved).

When you collect three tributes, the Raven Lord will curse your opponents by effectively shutting down their defenses. Forts will not attack and have half health and minions are reduced to one hit point.

Coupled with a couple rampaging merc camps, a cursed team is pretty much guaranteed to lose at least one, if not two or more, layers of defense.

But first, let’s talk about the map.

The map is close to a traditional 3-lane map, just a little skewed.

In the beginning…

As we can see from the shrinky-dink map at the start of the match, we have our opposing forces on opposite sides of the map. We have a more rounded top and bottom lane due to the starting points being at the edge of the map instead of tucked in the corners. This also reduces the overall map size since the top and bottom lanes do not contour to the rectangle.

Each side has a palace and two rows of defensive gates with forts, represented by the 8-bit rook-shaped icons.

By the time your forces have run out of the gate and hit the outermost towers, two new structures are available. I’m not sure of the name of these things, but I refer to them as scrying towers.

You can see the two yellow eye icons and a vision radius surrounding each one. There are no items to purchase in Heroes so that means no wards to place to keep an eye on remote reaches of the map. I’m not sure if these can detect invisible units or not, but they are helpful for keeping an eye on enemy movement in general.

The mechanic for capturing a tower should be familiar to anyone that leveled in Hellfire Peninsula on a PvP server (or Eastern Plagulands… or Zangarmarsh… or anywhere else Blizzard has employed a “capture by presence” objective).

The biggest differences between capturing objectives in Heroes versus WoW are speed and convenience.

Currently (remember, still in alpha and everything is subject to change), the capture bar fills fast. Ridiculously fast. From full red (owned by enemy) to full blue (controlled by your team) we’re talking 6-7 seconds. Maybe. It’s fast.

As for convenience, if the audience will please note the ridiculousness of the Lord of Terror on a pony straight from Eastvale Logging Camp. Yes, you can capture objectives while mounted.

Additionally, it seems to be a basic numbers game. If I have 2 team members in an objective and the enemy only has one, we will eventually win it. But if we don’t stay or successfully drive off the intruder, we will lose it almost instantly. (This is very important in the Dragon Shrine map and will be discussed in more depth there.)

Quick tangent because I ran across this screenshot next: How to tell if you are in cover.

As far as I can recall, every map has environmental spaces that can be used for concealment. On the Cursed Hollow map, concealment terrain is in the form of clumps of brown grass. This grass is pretty ubiquitous, you’ll phase in and out of concealment a lot just moving from point A to point B.

You can’t see me! Well, YOU can see me, but if you were in the game you couldn’t see me. If you were on the other side. But you’re all my friends and on my team, right?

The image above demonstrates a sneaky Diablo. I know I’m sneaky because I have a whitish-blueish eyeball thing above my character’s head. Note that the blue outline surrounding the Lord of Terror’s tootsies is not, in fact, an indication of invisibility (like the character outline I recall from LoL), but rather just an indication of that portion of your anatomy being hidden graphically behind something else, like a cemetery gate in this instance, or that you are mousing over that unit.

OK, back to more map features – the mercenary camps.

I don’t know about DOTA (anyone feel free to add comments), but in LoL, the center of the map is often referred to as “the jungle.” It is populated by stationary camps of mobs that provide XP and buffs when killed. These camps become active on set timers and respawn regularly.

Here is a shot of a map taken very soon into a Heroes match. (I didn’t time it, but my team is about to hit level 2 and the opponents just clicked over to 2.)

We’ve now got some yellow skull-type shapes on the map. There are plain skulls and fancy skulls with crossbones.

Each of these spots represents a mercenary (or merc) camp.

And here is me touring a fancy merc camp…

The text on the banner is small, but reads “Level 14 Solo” and “Defeat this camp to gain Mercenaries.”

First, you can hover over the skull icon on the map to see what level the merc camp is before you trot all the way across the map. This is incredibly useful.

Second, the camps will level up as the game progresses. If you don’t keep up in levels with your opponents, it means they will have easier access to better camps and you will get pounded to paste.

Pounded by what? By the mercs. As opposed to LoL, where killing a camp gives the players present for the kill a buff (and I think it’s last hit only that gets it), when you defeat a merc camp, you are merely beating them into submission. You will get the same objective-claiming mechanic as for a scrying tower (which means it’s possible to defeat the mercs but lose them to the enemy if you aren’t careful). Once sworn to your side, they will beat a path to the nearest enemy gate and tear shit up until they are dispatched.

This particular camp is a level 14 corpse golem, a smaller version of the main mechanic in the Haunted Mine map. As I am a level 1 prime evil, it would be stupid for me to take on this camp, so I will wander off. On my pony.

A little later in the game, I came across a level 9 camp of ogres. At level 11, this was an easy solo fight and I quickly claimed them for our own. Ogres are incredibly powerful (already being called cheesy in the forums).

Left unchecked, these little buggers will absolutely destroy fortifications. They chuck boulders and their range is *just* outside the reach of a fort’s cannons. Meaning if your side has creeps running uninterrupted to the enemy gate to deal with their advancing creeps and these guys are pelting the walls with rocks, they can almost single-handedly take out a defensive line. Creeps will eventually overrun them, but a single hero keeping an eye on them can keep them alive for a long time if there is no outright counterattack made.

Something else to point out about this particular picture. It looks like Diablo is laying a green, glowing egg. That is, in fact, a regen globe spawned when the merc camp was defeated.

Regen globes are dropped whenever a merc camp is defeated and when particular units in creep waves are killed. The only one I know for certain is in the first type of wave, you have a group of melee knights, a few archers, and one spellcaster guy. That guy. With the book and the pointy hat. If you need healing, focus him down.

Regen globes appear to only be visible/usable to the team that earned them. I’ve seen enemy units run over my globe without it doing anything. Running over a globe will regen both life and mana (95% positive on the mana part) and will zip out, Diablo-style, to nearby party members as well. They only last a short while, so be sure to pick them up before they fade out.

Not shown in this picture, is the respawn counter. Once a merc camp is commandeered into your service, the mercs pick up and run off to battle. From that point, a timer is visible on the camp and counts down to when new mercs will show up.

And besides the golem and ogres, there is at least one more merc type – a group of knights. The caster in that group is a PITA and should be taken first.

The level given is a suggestion for those attempting to take a group on solo. I’ve noticed with some characters, I can take it out a little sooner (assassins and warriors) while others I might have a little trouble even at the appropriate level (support and specialists). The AI in the practice games is pretty good about noticing if you’re on a camp and will break off from farming a lane to come help. As expected, with help you can take out camps much higher than the recommended solo level.

Mercs are great and all, but they’re a pretty standard staple in Heroes. What about these tribute things specific to the Cursed Hollow map?

Soon! (TM)

When you get this message on your screen, accompanied by the Raven Lord blabbing on about earning his favor, you pretty much need to hightail it to where the tribute is expected to spawn.

And where is that?

In this case, the lower rightish side. If you sqint, you can see some sort of dark blueish shape in the middle of the yellow circle.

The spawn locations are random, but your map will briefly light up to show you where to get to. This map has several locations marked by crumbling walls, raven statues, and a circle of stones. Any of those locations is fair game for a tribute spawn.

And here I am, camping a tribute that’s about to spawn. (I feel like I’m going over vacation slides.)

A couple things to note about this picture besides the purple swirly thing: The 2 character icons at the top middle and the player listed on the far right.

When a player dies, their death is announced (generic, “An enemy has fallen” or “An ally has fallen” sort of thing) and their name briefly appears on the edge of the screen. Enemies will be on the right and team members on the left.

After that, their icon will appear on the bar at the top and begin sliding towards the middle. Once the icon reaches the middle of the screen, the character is revived at their starting fountain. This allows you to track the respawns for everyone on the map.

Respawn timers get longer and longer – it appears to be a combination of number of times you’ve died and how late it is in the game. I had a game where I didn’t die at all until the very end and my respawn was absurdly long. Don’t die. It gets really boring really fast.

When the tribute has actually appeared, a similar message and commentary will signal it’s time to get it on.

Here we have an action shot of me helping to grab a tribute with the D3 demon hunter and SC2’s Tychus standing guard. (Note the sneaky grass on the right side, there are lots of ambush opportunities at tribute locations.)

The tribute itself is rather hard to see under our name plates, but it is a blueish-purplish glowy raven thing. Capturing involves a channeled cast, which can be interrupted by damage. Tyrande has a particularly good ability for fucking over someone’s tribute collecting day – she can cast a little owl that flies the length of the map. Properly talented, this little owl will fly through everything and can interrupt a channel regardless of where she is.

I am not sure if having multiple players helps speed up the channel, but I am sure that if a skill shot hits only one of us, the second still has a chance to finish the channel.

Regardless of who actually completes the channel, the message “Ally Gathered Tribute” will appear.

This confused me at first, when I was the only character on a tribute, but then I realized that no messages ever indicate who is responsible. This will hopefully reinforce the “team” feel of the game.

Thanks to my leet screen shot timing, we’ve got a bright beam of light coming up right underneath the tribute counter, but you should still be able to make out the 1 for our side.

You’ll notice that my whole team leveled up together, a trait unique to Heroes I believe. Objectives are worth a good chunk of XP and would be tempting for that even if they weren’t so powerful in terms of game control.

Now it’s time to screw around on the map some more, killing creeps and beating mercs. After a period of time, the Raven Lord will announce the next spawn.

Rinse and repeat until one team collects 3 tributes. The Raven Lord makes a speech about earning his blessing and the other team gets ready to bend over.

Note: Tributes are NOT reset at the time of a cursing. It is possible to run 2v2 and then have two curses in a row on opposite sides. Therefore, it is almost always worth trying to get the tribute so your team can be that much closer or to keep the enemy from being closer. You won’t lose them.

Oh look, I found a better tribute picture:

It even TELLS you to right-click to gather. Heroes goes a long way to take out the “I didn’t know what to do” excuse. You might not know when to do something or why you should be doing it, but things you can interact with are pretty well labeled.

OK, so you get 3 tributes, what next?

You go tear shit up. If possible, you pick up a merc camp or two right before snagging the third tribute as an extra insult to injury.

The Cursed Hollow map is not what I would describe as being sunny and cheerful, but when the curse drops, the cursed side of the map makes the other half look like a picnic day. The environment gets darker and I think it always rains.

As you can see in the image above, the counter for number of tributes is replaced by a timer. I can’t recall the exact amount of time a curse lasts, but it is over a minute. I believe it is a static amount of time, it does not get shorter the more often you use it.

In this image we can also see the mayhem I’ve caused by myself in a bot game. I’ve got three of my creeps following me in past the defensive line of a gate and two forts I already destroyed. There are also walls that can be destroyed, but I don’t really know why. Below the enemy demon hunter is the ruined remains of the healing well I took out.

Above the building I’m focusing on, you can see the mark of the Raven Lord, indicating the building is cursed. Its health was reduced by half and it cannot fire at me. (The pesky demon hunter can and I had to dispatch her to continue my Godzilla-like rampage.)

Below the health bar, you might be able to make out a couple rows of circles, most of which are empty. Forts and other buildings have a limited amount of ammo that can run out and slowly replenish over time. (There are also hero talents that can be taken to heal buildings and resupply ammo.) It’s moot in this instance because the building is cursed, but otherwise, it’s helpful to know when the gun is dry.

We missed it in this picture, but I had just wiped out a stream of enemy creeps with one AoE stomp – with only 1 hit point under the curse, they are easily removed.

In an AI bot practice game, if you show up to help once in a while, your side is pretty much guaranteed to get all the tributes and the game is over pretty fast, with maybe 2 curses.

In a VS match, the fighting around a tribute can be pretty intense. If you can’t take on the opposing team by yourself (and you most likely can’t) you should not run off to tackle it by yourself. This map really reinforces the concept of being a team brawler – bring a friend or 4 to help.

I’ve seen a post or two in the forums about people dodging this map, but I don’t really see why. If you get cursed twice in a row, it’s pretty much over. But that just means you need to fight that much harder to either gather three in a row yourself or at least take one or two to delay it.

Snowballing is a concern in the game, since a whole team levels at the same time. Blizzard is looking at ways to minimize that, comebacks from a well-organized team should always be a possibility, but without any matchmaking at the moment it’s very likely that a pre-made 5-man will roflstomp a group of solo queues in short order. However, that is true of all the maps. In my opinion, this one doesn’t feel any easier to lose on than the other three.

It takes a couple games to get enough screen shots for one of these reviews so it might be a day or two before the next post is up. Feel free to leave any questions or comments about HoS in the comments and I’ll try to get answers!

12. The AI for group construction eats paste.
13. The Try mode could be a lot more useful.
14. Not every role represented each week in the rotation.

…

Next week I’ll hopefully have some map-tacular posts ready. There are four maps and RNG is a fickle mistress at times (and I forget to take screen shots because FUN), but we’ll see what we get.

]]>https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/friday-round-up/feed/0AriochHeroes of the Storm – Innovationshttps://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/heroes-of-the-storm-innovations/
https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/heroes-of-the-storm-innovations/#respondThu, 24 Apr 2014 11:30:45 +0000http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/?p=3280]]>OK, thought I would switch gears a little bit to stop bitching and start talking about the good stuff. I mean, I do really enjoy what I’ve seen of the game so far and I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression (especially since – can’t stress it enough – we’re still in alpha).

Innovation 1 – Pre-game character selection. At least for solo queue. (I will talk about group queue when I find someone to play with.)

Huh what?

Yeah, crazy.

So you log in and choose which type of game you want to play: Practice, Co-op, or VS.

You select your character.

You join the queue. (And wait a while…)

Presto! In the game with the character of your choice!

I’ll talk about why this is awesome and then I’ll talk about why this merits Concern #12. (Sorry, I can’t stop bitching. And I had to renumber the concerns in the previous post. Numbers are hard.)

Awesome reason #1 – I can choose which character I want to play.

Awesome reason #2 – I can choose which character I want to play.

Awesome reason #3 – I can choose which character I want to play.

Um… those reasons look a little, well, the same.

They are.

I can log in and pick my favorite character to play. Every time if I wanted to. Like Tyrael? Play the shit out of some Tyrael. Like Nova? Fifty fucking games in a row with Nova if you like.

I can be guaranteed to get credit for the daily quest without relying on the RNG gods to favor me in the team selection. This is important when you’ve got quests like, “Play two games as a support character.” (Assuming that the game is recognizing quest completion… they’re working on it. Alpha, remember?)

I can enter a game and be guaranteed that I’m getting a role I’m (hopefully) somewhat familiar with and no one will scream “PICK ORDER” when I politely request if anyone minds if I take support and then I end up as some random role I wasn’t ready for and get all flustered and don’t enjoy myself because I got pushed into something and now I’m letting everyone on the team down. (Breathe.)

Sometimes the wait queues are a little longer, there is still a restriction of heroes being unique on a team. If everyone picks Kerrigan all at the same time, we’re going to have to wait our turns.

And I am totally OK with that, it is completely worth the wait to me. (And quick reminder, this is all for solo queue, I’ll learn about group queuing later.)

But how about the not-so-awesome?

Concern #12 – The AI for group construction eats paste.

This should be pretty simple, right? The dungeon and raid finders in WoW put together groups with appropriate compositions without too much trouble. Hell, we don’t even need a specific balance of the roles in Heroes, just a little diversity.

We don’t need 4 support and an assassin. But that’s what we get – all sorts of bizarre combinations that would never have been put together by people picking their roles after joining the group.

If the matchmaking can put a little more effort into variety in group composition, this concern will be brushed aside easily in favor of its benefits.

Innovation #2 – Try before you buy.

Like LoL, Heroes uses an availability model where different heroes are available on a random basis each week. Any hero you have purchased is always available to you.

But purchasing heroes takes either hard cash or harder gold – the cash prices are a bit steep right now and the gold earnings are painfully slow.

No one likes buyers remorse on what should be a fun toy like a new character.

So in the shop, there is a TRY button for each character.

Pick your character, click the button, get teleported to a single-lane map to take the hero for a drive before committing.

The idea is wonderful – I can’t stress how much ease of mind comes from not having to wait for a particular hero to come up on rotation so I can kick the tires before shelling out.

But…

Concern 13 – The Try mode could be a lot more useful.

I know, I’m crying about free cake and ice cream. But this is an alpha and our best opportunity to get things polished before publication.

When you enter the try map, you have a single lane with a small castle and gate/fort structure on either end. It’s really just a miniature piece of a map, and it is plenty for what this feature needs. No complaints about the map.

You have the option to turn on an enemy hero, a partner hero for you, and some creeps to fill the lanes and make life interesting.

Your enemy hero is ALWAYS Arthas.

I don’t mind Arthas, we had our differences in the Icecrown Citadel, but all that is behind us.

What I do mind is that Arthas has an obnoxious aura effect that damages you. Constantly. Technically, it’s draining his mana (slowly) but the AI is pretty good about using the proper ability rotation to keep his mana up.

So all my melee hero tests feel more like I’m learning how to counter Arthas instead of generically testing the character overall. Either a random assortment of heroes to test against, being able to select a specific hero, or the addition of a training dummy-type opponent would greatly improve the experience.

Enough about the opponent, what about the help?

Your partner in the lane (it’s 2v1 because we’re special) is always Malfurion. When playing a warrior or assassin in the test, this is pretty handy. When trying a support role, especially Malfurion, it’s not as helpful having your twin ride down the lane with you, both casting heals as Arthas’ aura ticks away at everything. If you play a support character in the try mode, your partner should be something a little beefier. You know, so you can support him.

The third issue is that it is just a taste. I know they don’t want people sitting in the try mode all day, time it if you have to, but let us actually level and unlock skills. Currently, you can farm Arthas until your eyes bleed and you will level up (as will he), but you never unlock your skills. A character at level 1 feels much different than a character at level 10, or 15, or 20. Part of determining if a hero is a good fit is getting a feel for how the leveling process feels.

Concern #14 – Related to the random character selection… there is not a character to represent each role available every week in the free rotation.

This is at least the second week there has been no free specialist in the rotation. And this early in the game, not many people have picked them up – there’s only 4 and they’re all rather, well, special.

I’m hoping this is an issue right now for one of two reasons: either Blizzard doesn’t want the representation data from the specialists to get skewed (they are the minority of heroes), or someone overlooked this when designing whatever system they use to pull the rotation. I’m assuming the rotation is currently hand selected to make data collection on specific heroes easier, but ultimately I would think this will be a system-generated sort of thing.

With specialists in particular, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except for the daily quests. There are people sitting on a quest to play two games with a specialist. They’ll be sitting on those quests until a specialist enters the rotation, they crack and buy one, or a way to reroll/pass a quest is introduced.

From the larger gameplay perspective, once the roster is larger, if this were to happen to any other role (assassin, warrior, or support) that would leave the entry bracket of new players pretty well hosed when it comes to getting a balanced experience.

Innovation #3 – Probably the biggest innovation is the inclusion of map objectives. This is a lot of ground to cover, I’ll probably give each map its own post so we can include and discuss pretty screen shots.

Besides, need to save something else to post!

…

Remember, looking for something specific? Ask away and I’ll do my best to get an answer!

]]>https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/oops/feed/0AriochHeroes of the Storm – Continuing Concernshttps://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/heroes-of-the-storm-continuing-concerns/
https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/heroes-of-the-storm-continuing-concerns/#commentsTue, 22 Apr 2014 11:30:15 +0000http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/?p=3273]]>Yesterday we looked at a few concerns about issues that I would like to see addressed.

Part of the problem (a huge part) is that this is a technical alpha – really the infancy of the game and the first time the developers are allowing someone to hold their baby and comment on it.

My first concern, about muting and reporting, can most likely be chalked up to alpha status. I can’t imagine Blizzard actually releasing the game without those features. The same goes with concern #3 regarding some method of dealing with AFK players.

There isn’t a lot of basic information available, even to the testers. I’m not sure if it was my timing and getting my invite right before the weekend or if it is deliberate, but there doesn’t seem to be as much Blue interaction in the alpha forums as there was in the D3 beta forums.

When a new WoW expansion comes out, we pretty well know what to expect – another chunk of WoW with a new coat of paint and a couple new tricks, but nothing really ground breaking. WoW isn’t going to turn into an FPS overnight. (Leave that for Titan?)

When SC2 came out, we pretty well knew what we were getting – Star Craft; better and faster and prettier and bigger, but still the same space-based RTS we enjoyed for a decade.

For D3, we knew it was a dungeon hack-and-slash loot grind. The ability to respec on the fly might be one of the craziest changes to the franchise.

All three built off an existing franchise.

When Hearthstone came out, I saw a few references to Magic and a couple other collectible card games, but for the most part people didn’t know what to expect and just let it all happen. Most seem to be pleased with the result of this entry into a relatively small game genre.

But Heroes of the Storm dares to tread where there are not only big names such as LoL and DOTA, but there a probably two dozen of the little guys trying to claim a piece of the MOBA pie.

As such, comparisons between them (which I’m sure happened when WoW first came out against EQ and happens every time a new game comes out to “compete” with WoW in the MMO space) are inevitable.

This is really where concerns 2 (compelling players into VS mode for quests) and 4 (gold acquisition/character advancement) come in. Any time it looks like Blizzard is trying a new approach, it’s met with “BUT LOL DOES IT THIS WAY AND THAT MEANS THAT ALL MOBAS HAVE TO DO IT THAT WAY.” Which I find really amusing since even in LoL you can progress in co-op mode.

What we have so far from Blizzard is, “A FRESH TAKE ON THE TEAM BRAWLER,” and “THERE’S NO ‘I’ IN TEAM,” or “BATTLEGROUNDS THAT SHAPE GAMEPLAY.” (All taken from the “GAME” page.)

Not, “LOL BUT WITH MAGIC COWS, DEMONS, AND ALIENS.”

But still not so much on the details of what the exact nature of this “fresh take” is.

We know Blizzard. They bring the gaming experience to the masses. Raiding in WoW has changed from the 1% to everyone can at least jump in to a flex game as their schedule allows. Hearthstone is pretty quick and painless. SC has a single-player campaign and matchmaking for multiplayer (I don’t know how effective the multiplayer is, I haven’t played since the days of the original bnet.) In D3, I can solo play to my heart’s content or co-op with friends.

So even as they advance into the world of MOBAs, the likelihood of creating a LoL/DOTA clone is slim. The very nature of the Blizzard experience is to be inclusive rather than exclusive. For people like me, this represents an incredible opportunity. I like the mechanics of the characters, the maps, the objectives… I don’t like the people. (And really haven’t since the days of the original bnet – which is pretty much what soured me on the PvP environment in the first place.)

Combine the vague “we’re doing something new!” with the people expecting/demanding a LoL clone with Blizzard skins, and add in a health dose of Blues only responding to threads dealing with specific bugs like character clipping, the forums are mostly just back and forth between the “hardcores” and the “casuals” and whether one or the other has any more “right” to earn gold in the game.

There is so little information about the game play, that sometimes we don’t know if something is a real bug, a placeholder, or a deliberate design.

For example, I leveled my account to the point where I unlocked the daily quests. Which you then had to have read the patch notes (under a section about an XP cap) to discover that daily quests can only be completed in VS mode. The game itself doesn’t say that and if you started after the release of the patch notes you probably wouldn’t know to look for the notes (not to mention it was under an unrelated header). Oh, and that patch notes were sort of tucked away, as they were old news by the time my invite came through.

But there has to be a couple dozen threads, “BUG: Can’t get completion credit for daily quests.” I try to be smart and look for similar threads before I post, and those people certainly could as well.

And I wish they would, because it pushed my question down the page about how many daily quests should I be getting and when they are supposed to reset. Other people are getting 3. I’m getting 1. Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t reset. But we don’t know if this is a bug or an issue tied to my level or my time zone or what.

So I know a lot of my concerns are probably being considered somewhere, we just aren’t getting any Blue responses to acknowledge most issues. And that feeds concern 5 very strongly – does Blizzard have a clear design in mind and they just don’t have time to tell us or are they in a ship being tossed about in the storm of the community and the destination will depend on which side blows the hardest?

Previously, Blizzard has always staunchly stood by a line of not allowing community demands to influence game design, but that hasn’t always held true. Ultimately, they play the balancing game of what is good mechanical design and what will keep people plugging in quarters.

The gaming world has changed a lot in the past few years. When I was first playing SC, I never thought anyone would ever win significant chunks of money for sending swarms of zerglings across the map. But they do now, and as Tir pointed out to me the other day, the lure of eSports seems to hook deeply into Blizzard. The alpha forums don’t seem to think that eSports are a contributing factor, but with as hazy as the design is, we’ve got to consider it.

MOBAs are popular eSports. They are fast to watch and generally don’t require a lot of commentary to get the gist across. Instead of watching dozens of units, you can focus on only a handful of heroes running around. You can root for your favorite character, independent of the person playing it.

The decision to move the quests (and any account progression at max level) into VS mode only could have happened for any number of reasons. There was a short Blue response concerning they felt it was “too easy to farm rewards,” which is easily fixable with reduced rewards. With another option available, the given reason feels… flimsy. Usually when the answer to something is “too easy,” Blizzard goes to great lengths to tune the encounter appropriately. This was like saying, “Well, everyone can beat this raid boss so we’re removing it from the game.” That isn’t how Blizzard works. They tweak the encounter until they are happy with the pass/fail rate.

Maybe they wanted more people in the queue to improve wait times or stress that specific portion of the game. Maybe they want to watch account progression with less co-op mode. Or they are testing the waters to see if they should try to be more of a hardcore LoL/DOTA clone or if they do have enough of a co-op player base to make it worth their while to support co-op play. Or maybe they have the end goal of being the next hot item in eSports and they want us all in VS mode now so we won’t be disappointed when co-op gets no support later.

We don’t know. And we don’t know if they know. (But do they know that we don’t know if they know?)

Anyway… more mechanics, less politics! (I know I said that yesterday.)

Concern 7 – Clunky movement.

Movement is point and click. And click. And click. And click. CLICK.CLICK.CLICK.CLICKITY-CLICKITY-CLICK. Coming off a couple days of playing D3, with its smooth “hold down the mouse button to move” this was an absolutely jarring experience. Outside of the constant clicking, sometimes the heroes don’t feel very responsive and are slow to change course. Thankfully, you can click on the minimap to move long distances, but you’ll hear more about that later.

Concern 8 – Lack of a party frame.

Want to see if one of your teammates is low on health? Has enough mana to cast their ult? Too bad. You can hold the TAB key to bring up a list of your party members, but no useful information outside of experience earned, kills (sorry, “takedowns”), deaths, etc. Since the HUD is roughly a reskin of SC2, we do have a huge 3D portrait in the lower left that does nothing except an idle animation. Your character basically just watches you and breathes heavily. Creepy.

The shrines are online! Quick, get the dragon knight!

Concern 9 – Shrinky-dink map.

Again, due to the (hopefully temporary) use of the SC2 HUD, the minimap is pitifully small for the level of detail trying to be shown. Each character is represented, each merc camp, the towers, your projected path, and any map objectives (some of which sparkle and pulse on the map, taking up even more space). The minimap tends to be a blur of red, blue, black, and yellow with some bits moving around and covering everything up. Trying to use the minimap to get to a distant point is a bit of a crap shoot as it just sort of gets you in the general quadrant of the map you are trying to get to.

Concern 10 – The chat log is primitive.

I’m sure this one will get better over time, but currently we have a very tiny box that shows only 3-4 lines of chat/pings with no timestamps and no way to scroll back. On the one hand, I may have been brutally insulted in a game and just happened to miss it, but on the other I may have missed an important coordination explanation.

Concern 11 – Very difficult to review a character’s abilities.

From the character selection screen, you can click on a character and see their starting abilities. It looks like you get all of these out of the gate and that’s it, right?

Nope.

Your heroic ability will be a choice when it unlocks, but you start with the others. Doesn’t say you only get one heroic, you just have to know that.

And… as you level you will unlock new talents that will either modify the starters or be new abilities entirely.

Where do you go to see these? (Outside of actually being in a game.)

The shop, of course! Even if you OWN the character, you have to go to the shop to review your build options.

Where you can’t even see the talents on the same page as the abilities they modify. You have to go to a separate talent page to see what you will be asked to choose from in the game. And from this page, each level unlock is showcased separately. And you better hope the talent isn’t very wordy. Anything past the first four lines gets cut off with no way to expand the content.

But the opposite problem is usually true – the descriptions are too short or incomplete.

Diablo has an ability to collect Soulstones as he kills things. You collect these and then have the option when you die to use the stones for a 5-second resurrection instead of the usual 10 second to 60+ second wait. There are two talents to modify this ability. One increases the carrying capacity to 200. One decreases the number of stones needed to 75. But nowhere in the base ability or character description does it say how many he can carry or how many it costs as a baseline. (We can guess his baseline capacity and cost is 100 stones, but it’s just an educated guess.)

While you’re in the shop and reviewing your character’s options, you can’t be in queue. While in queue, all you can see is the same items as from the character selection screen.

You can see your abilities in game – and I’ll try to get to that next time!

…

If there’s anything in specific you want to see discussed or screen shots taken of, let me know!

]]>https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/22/heroes-of-the-storm-continuing-concerns/feed/5AriochInGameCharacter AbilitiesCharacter TalentsHeroes of the Storm – First Concernshttps://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/heroes-of-the-storm-first-concerns/
https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/heroes-of-the-storm-first-concerns/#commentsMon, 21 Apr 2014 11:30:20 +0000http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/?p=3264]]>First things first – this is a fun game. But it is in alpha which means everything is in flux. The list of concerns below is not intended to be a negative rant, just my agressive-sounding grocery list of things that I would like to see addressed. And it will be multiple posts.

On to the rant!

Background

Got the invite Thursday evening, installed overnight. Easy peasy through the Battlenet launcher. I played most of Friday and Saturday.

I do have *some* previous MOBA experience, I may have even blogged about my LoL shenanigans. However, LoL is pretty much my only prior MOBA so any comparisons I make are limited to that. And my LoL install is buggered so I couldn’t log in real quick to check on a few things and it’s been awhile. So comparisons are also at least a year old.

Game Setup

The available play options are:

Practice – you with a team of 4 AI bots against a team of 5 AI bots

Co-op – you plus 1 or more friends (up to 5) against a team of 5 AI bots

Versus (VS) – you plus 4 other people against 5 other people

Character selection is like LoL with a rotating group of free characters and you can pay to own a character. This week’s characters are:

E.T.C. (a tauren representing the WoW band)

Muradin (WoW dwarf)

Tassadar (SC protoss)

Witch Doctor (D3 class)

Zeratul (SC protoss)

Arthas (WoW Lich King, only available after your account is level 7)

Each character is classified by a role:

Assassin – deal high damage but low defenses

Warrior – deal moderate damage and are more “tanky” than assassins

Support – healers and buffers, limited damage

Specialist – weird shit

There are 4 maps randomly available, each with a unique mechanic (Note that the names are not accurate, I didn’t write them down and they aren’t neatly showcased anywhere):

Cursed Hollow – earn the favor of the Raven Lord by collecting three of his tributes – cursing the enemy’s forces (structures will not fire and have half health, minions are 1 HP each)

Haunted Mines – fight topside like normal, but when the mines open, go below and kill undead to collect skulls – the team with the most skeletons raises the more powerful golem to wreak havoc upon the enemy

Dragon Knight – control the sun and moon shrine to briefly claim the Dragon Knight as your ally (replacing the character model of the player who claims him)

And there are quests. These are very similar to Hearthstone and include things like, “Play a game with a StarCraft hero.”

Of course, there is a shop to purchase new heroes, skins, and mounts.

Oh yeah, there are mounts. Everyone has the basic pony model right at the start.

Your account levels up as you play games and earn experience. Leveling your account unlocks new features (like an extra free hero and accessing quests) and provides a small amount of gold.

The Concerns

There is currently no ranked matchmaking system in place. This is something in progress so is not, in itself, a concern. But it does mean that all players in VS mode are in the same pool based loosely on account level. And, like a traditional MOBA, it looks like we’re already attracting toxic players.

Concern 1 – There is currently no report or mute feature.

But there is a practice and co-op mode, why don’t I just play those?

I actually really enjoy the practice mode and play it almost exclusively. Since this is an invitation-only alpha, I don’t have any friends to co-op with. A pre-made co-op of strangers doesn’t seem that different to me than a VS game. The game might be a little easier against the AI instead of human opponents, but it’s still 5 people more or less randomly grouped together.

And here’s where it gets tricky.

There is a daily XP cap for combined practice and co-op modes. I’m OK with that.

But there are also quests. And quests are the best source of gold. (Only source once you are at max level.) Quests were originally available in all game modes but were suddenly moved to VS only.

It looks like I’m not in a minority when I say that I want to play games with my friends or by myself. With a leveling cap in place for my preferred game play style, and quests being the only real option for earning gold, I (and many others) feel compelled to play in VS mode.

This wouldn’t be so bad, except for the lack of reporting and muting. And somehow, even though this is an ALPHA there are people that are already god’s gift to Heroes of the Storm demanding to know why everyone isn’t as uber elite as they are.

And there is no “all” chat – you are limited to your own team mates to spew venom at.

So many non-PVP players are AFKing in a match just to get their daily quest done. I’ve done 4 VS mode games and I’ve been lucky so far. Either I’m pulling my weight and playing well enough to fly under the radar or the people are nice/as new as I am. (I really doubt the former.)

Concern 3 – There’s no way to report or remove AFK individuals. And if someone does leave, I hear you get an AI bot.

Now all the PVPers are upset because the casuals that were getting abused decided it was better to just walk away from the keyboard and get quest credit rather than even bother trying. And there’s nothing they can do to remove those players from the game. No one is happy.

As far as we can tell, you get a little gold through the leveling process, but this is limited as there is a cap at level 40. Other than that, gold is only available in quests.

I am perfectly fine with VS getting more gold than practice or co-op. I’m playing practice to relax and just enjoy playing. I recognize that in game design terms, that isn’t as challenging as someone going toe to toe with another human. (There’s also a recognition that for some people, the AI is probably more than enough of a challenge, but I think everyone can agree that other players tend to be more unpredictable and are generally considered to be more challenging.)

But without being able to earn gold outside of VS mode, I will hit cap, buy the 2 or 3 characters I can afford with my hoarded gold, play those until I’m bored, and then walk away.

A bottom tier character is 2000 gold. Mid is 5500, and top is 10k. (Currently, prices are subject to change.)

I’m at level 9 and have 6700 gold. The biggest chunk of this was a 2k bonus for hitting level 4 (the only bonus of its size that I am aware of). Then I’ve done 4 quests at about 250g each. The rest came sporadically from leveling with a level being worth 600g after level 4.

Skin recolors are already locked behind heroic quests (which I will have access to at level 10) and I believe are available in VS mode only. Why also lock earning gold for champions behind VS mode?

Concern 5 – Blizzard doesn’t know what type of game they are trying to make.

Obviously they are trying to make a MOBA. But their advertised emphasis so far has been this will be the new MOBA that appeals to a wider variety of players (read: more wallets). And it’s true. So far in the alpha I’ve seen the forums pretty evenly divided between non-competitive players (practice and co-op mode) and the competitive hardcore traditional MOBA players. If anything, I would say the scales tilt a little heavier towards the casual side.

Someone made a good point about this on the forums – most of the hardcore players will stay in LoL or DOTA or whatever they are currently playing because the technical aspects of the game is what holds them.

Heroes is a simplified game compared to LoL. There is no gear to buy during the game. You choose your talents, but every talent you are presented with has at least *some* benefit for your character. You might not pick the ultimate best talent for your team composition, but you can’t take anything that is completely useless.

You also level as a team so there is a significant loss of self-importance. Try as hard as you can to level yourself and you drag your team right up with you. (Which is awesome for support. I can feed a lane partner creep kills in LoL all day long but then I have to spend my meager earnings on wards and lag behind the rest in gear acquisition. Here I unlock skills with the rest of my team.) The recorded stats are virtually non-existent so there isn’t much basis for individual bragging rights.

With all that, the game play itself screams, “Hey! Just join and have fun playing a character. The size of your epeen is irrelevant.”

So Blizzard has advertised for and successfully attracted much interest from the more casual player that wants to play a low key MOBA. But then they go and build account progression around either competitive play or deep wallets – or both.

Concern 6 – The hero pricing model is ridonkulous.

In LoL, I could pick up a champion on sale for about $2. Actual cost would vary based on how many Riot Points were purchased at a time. A newer champion would be closer to $7 or $10. I didn’t buy any skins, but I looked at a few and decided that the price point was acceptable if I stayed with the game. And all those items could be earned by grinding up Influence Points if I didn’t care to shell out the cash.

Right now, there are a couple bundles on sale in Heroes.

Wowsers! 60 and 70% off!

Now, the basic premise of a bundle is to group items together and offer at a better value than purchasing the items individually.

So let’s look at the Starter Bundle at 70% off.

Note that original price of $96.40.

That is the actual cost of buying all these items individually. (The unicorn mount is the most expensive piece at $19.99 all by its lonesome. Yep. Another $20 sparkly pony. Although this one does appear to shoot rainbows out of its butt while it runs.)

The bundle itself isn’t on sale for 70% off. The “sale” price is the reduced price one gets for purchasing the bundle.

And bundles can only be bought with cash. (I don’t really have a problem with that, but it ties in to the next points.)

As of right now, and this could just be because we’re so early into development and have a limited roster of only 25 characters, there are no true “sale” characters.

There are the three tiers and there are the bundles. But there is no “This week get Malfurion for 1500 instead of 2000 gold!” or “This week get Malfurion for $1.99 instead of $3.99!”

This could be a deliberate difference in the sale structure, but I prefer the LoL rotation that allows individual characters to come on sale instead of being forced into an entire bundle to get a deal.

And I prefer to have the opportunity to buy heroes on sale individually with gold. Especially since earning gold will effectively be nonexistent once I hit level 40 – unless I want to go muck up a VS match to complete my quests.

Skins can only be purchased with cash, either through a bundle or individually. Again, I’m OK with this. They have to make their money somewhere.

But. Arthas.

For only $7.49 you can lose the hat! (Rumor has it you also get a new voice and new lines for the “Death Knight” skin, but overall, you’re paying $10 to turn off helm visibility.)

Recolors of skins appear to be locked behind hero quests which become available at level 10. My understanding from the forums it that these are also VS mode only. So again, If I want the pink Diablo recolor I’m off to potentially ruin someone else’s competitive game play just long enough to unlock a pretty pink prime evil.

For me, LoL’s shop was perfect. There was a good rotation of characters on sale, and could be bought with time or money. The items that were cash only were vanity only items, priced reasonably (not an 8 buck hat removal service), and could also be purchased on sale.

And, most importantly, you can earn IP (slowly) in a co-op environment.

Back to concern 5, Blizzard has set up the shop in such a way as to nudge people into VS for skin recolors from hero quests (totally OK) and the purchase of champions will require VS to earn gold through daily quests.

But they are attracting the more casual crowd that just wants to play with a couple friends and relax. And then telling these people they have to frolic in VS to earn their champions.

Vanity items (skins, recolors, and mounts) are great things to require cash or use to “incentivize” VS modes.

Having a couple steady heroes to choose from is probably going to be important to a lot of players. I know it is for me. I like to pick 2-4 characters and really learn them. Heroes are the most important thing in the game and for a player like me, knowing that I have a couple I can call upon when I want to relax instead of picking someone new to learn based on the random rotation that week means a lot.

Here’s a fun psychology tidbit about me: If a non-vanity item is available to me with the choice of a long grind doing something I like but is also available for cash, there is a chance I will purchase the item as a small convenience or a reward for a tough week at work. If it’s locked behind something I don’t want to do or only available by cash I get stubborn and walk away.

Moral of the story: Just because I can get something for free doesn’t mean that I won’t pay for it.

But if you can earn all the heroes for free grinding in co-op, why would anyone else pay for them?

You could ask the same question of the people in VS mode. If you can grind out all your quests in VS mode and enjoy it, why would you buy any characters?

If you get to play the game in the way you want and earn rewards, why can’t the rest of the people play the game in the way they want and have access to similar non-vanity rewards?

“Challenge” isn’t a good answer. Blizzard doesn’t get anything more from you playing a “challenging” game versus a player playing a less “challenging” game. If bots or farming is the worry, lessen the reward for practice/co-op. (It’s not like we haven’t seen win trading or the like in the competitive PvP world. Or even bots in AV…) But unless Blizzard has some sort of PvP-powered generator and that’s what’s powering the servers that support the game, it makes no difference what mode the game is in to offer rewards.

D3 and WoW are both great examples. Want really nice gear? Play at the higher difficulty levels. Want to experience the game in a relaxed manner with some friends? Skip through on normal or flex. But you will still get rewards. Not as shiny or not as fast, but the carrot is still there and that’s what keeps us coming back.

And who knows? Maybe after hitting level 40 and earning a few champions in “casual” mode, maybe I’ll find the one that really clicks and I’ll gladly wade into VS. But to be successful, anyone making the transition should do so willingly and not because they feel it’s the only way to advance a character.

We did see a Blue briefly pop into one of the threads and comment that they were taking it all under advisement, so we’ll see what happens.

But we’re nearing 2500 words, have to save some for next time!

And the next one will be more nuts and bolts, less “what is Blizz trying to do here.”

Anyway, looking at some achievements, I hadn’t played my barbarian since the middle of 2012. Or any other character in D3. I effectively dropped the game for nearly two years.

But all the fun with the Crusader got me thinking I should check in on my Barbarian.

After a good 20 or 30 minutes of cleaning out oooooooooooold, baaaaaaaaaaad gear on my mule characters, I was ready to enter the game.

I vaguely recalled that I was in Act II in Inferno level difficulty. The game had definitely stepped it up a notch and I was forced to evaluate my skills every few quests to pick what was best for the upcoming battles. It was certainly doable and I’m just a tad miffed at myself that I didn’t focus long enough to finish Inferno up… of course, I assumed Inferno would still be there.

And I assumed that with the original difficulty tiers being wiped, the game would dump me in Act II with a higher difficulty level, maybe Master since I wouldn’t have completed Act V yet.

Survey says… Creating Game…

Welcome to Westmarch!

WTF?

Where am I and what am I doing here?

The game registered that I had beaten Diablo and finished the original game, so naturally I would want to jump right into Act V, right?

Apparently stuff happens after Act IV… Tyrael starts a club and some other nonsense, but I have no real idea of what all transpired. Guess I’ll have to wait to slog through there on my Crusader.

(Crusader is now level 34 and in Act III with a monster weapon and laying waste to the world around him.)

Starting out at the beginning of Act V in “legacy” gear (and not very good, either – I had terrible luck with appropriate drops) was a little shaky. It wasn’t really “hard” per se, just time consuming. And my Enchantress is an idiot that will stand in anything gooey/shiny/glowy so long as it does damage.

I think the first decent weapon I picked up doubled my damage. From there, things got better quite a bit faster.

The game did put me in normal mode and I left it there. I was missing one skill entirely from my bar and had to replace it. The others still worked about like I remembered, but I have no clue what skill was removed.

The Barbarian is a little squishier than my Crusader. OK. She’s actually a LOT squishier, what with not carting around a steel door to stand behind, but with a little attention to the ground I was standing in, I only used one health potion (thank you for making them all one level!) in the last fight and that was the closest I got to dying.

And once I have some gold reserves built up and a weapon I don’t plan on replacing immediately, I’m transmogging back to this weapon model:

The ending felt a little weird for me, probably because it was disconnected from the story for me by 2 years and an explanatory cut scene or three. But the new environments were awesome, the fight mechanics were pretty (Malthael has a spiffy flame attack), and I really enjoyed moving the stories forward for the followers and crafting NPCs. I didn’t get to the quest line for the Enchantress or the Blacksmith (or the Mystic, if she has one), but I did want to save something for the Crusader to do.

I logged out with the Barbarian at 67 and puttering around in Adventure mode. I did one complete set of 5 adventures and a rift. It was an enjoyable way to go back through old content without it feeling like a grind again. Except for the one adventure where I somehow went the wrong way and just couldn’t find the bonus boss. Blarg.

…

So does this all mean that we can look forward to a bunch of Diablo posts?

Eh.

Other than comparisons between classes, there really isn’t much to talk about Diablo. I’ll try to keep everyone posted on my progress – I would like to complete the story with each character at least once.

Besides.

This happened.

]]>https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/old-is-new-again/feed/2AriochBarbWeaponHereosRainbow Traditionhttps://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/rainbow-tradition/
https://clearcasting.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/rainbow-tradition/#commentsThu, 17 Apr 2014 15:55:59 +0000http://clearcasting.wordpress.com/?p=3255]]>I am successfully taking some much needed time off of work to relax – without being sick or having a ton of homework to do.

My WoW subscription has officially lapsed.

So what’s there to do?

Play the D3 expansion!

Tir and I started Crusaders at roughly the same time. Seeing as how I hadn’t logged into D3 since before the patch – the FIRST patch, not the expansion, but the very first big balancing patch back in 2012 I think – I started on normal mode. I think he’s been bouncing between master and elite.

With the difference in difficulty, I’m usually a couple minutes ahead of him in completing a quest arc. I have fewer elite packs to deal with, but I also take more time poking around in my inventory so it almost balances out.

The big difference is in level. By the time I was level 10 I had caught up to him in the story, but he was level 20. I’m now level 30 and I think he’s 42 – but we both just started Act III.

So far, I’m really enjoying the Crusader class.

The attacks are big and beefy and even with my so-so gear I feel like a force to be reckoned with. I haven’t come close to dying yet (chalk that up to the difficulty level, not any skill on my part) and I feel relatively safe wading into huge piles of mobs that even my barbarian would have thought twice about.

I’m not sure how much of the perceived ease is due to the changes in the difficulties and how much is the Crusader is just that bad-ass. Of course, I’m carrying a shield that contains enough steel to cover a car and I’m whipping around a 2-hander like it was a piece of licorice. (That passive may be a wee bit overpowered. I like it.)

Tir rolled the female model and I took the male. From what I can hear over the explosions of bodies, the female Crusader is a little colder and distant. I was expecting the male version to be just as detached, but he’s actually rather warm and friendly with a bit of a sense of humor. I think I may have been a little disappointed until I got used to it.

Looking at some of these old rainbows, it appears that the leveling has definitely changed a little. I know my play style of “KILL AND BREAK IT ALL” has not changed, but my Crusader is level 15 by the time this shot was taken and pre-Reaper of Souls characters were in the 10-13 level range for this quest spot.

…

Flipping through the achievements, it appears my original achievement for completing Act IV on my barbarian was turned into a feat of strength, as did all my completions for the old difficulty levels. *shakes cane and mutters about Inferno back in the day* (To be fair, I didn’t complete Inferno, I was in the middle of Act II when I got distracted and then MoP came out…)

I’m not sure if I want to swap back to my Barbarian any time soon or if I should just plow through the rest of the story/leveling experience with the Crusader.